la valse vide
by metaphorically-blue
Summary: [oneshot][DominicAnemone] She regrets trying to dance with empty air.


Warning/Spoiler: As usual, spoilers abound. Ahem. And it's Dominic/Anemone, because I like it.

Disclaimer: I don't own squat.

la valse vide

_i._

She doesn't know how to dance.

Not the real way, anyways.

Certainly, she can spin and twirl and hold her arms up in the air, but she can't hold hands with someone and go around a room to the tempo of a waltz.

She doesn't know how.

So she asks theEND in a fit of desperation. But it doesn't know either.

(_she wasn't really expecting an answer, after all, theEND is a machine, it doesn't have anyone to waltz with, just like her, but she had to ask because she hates not knowing_)

Gulliver wouldn't respond when she asked.

(_but like he would know, he can't dance at all_)

So when he comes in with some food, she looks at him and asks the question.

"Dominic?"

He looks at her, half-distracted. "Hmm?"

"How do you dance?"

"What? Why are you asking me?"

She glares at him. "Because I want to know how, idiot! How do you dance a waltz?"

He steps towards her. "Well…here." He grabs her hands, placing one on his shoulder, one in his. His other hand goes to her back.

She smacks him, steps away. "You pervert!"

He sighs as he rubs his cheek. "Look, that's how you do it, okay?" The hands go back in place. "Now, just step with me." Three steps, slow_quickquick_, then turn. It's easy, and she soon gets it as he carries her around the large room. Slanting beams of light fall across the floor, their steps echoing as they turn and step.

He stops, bows. She curtsies. He takes her hand, kisses it. She smacks him again.

"What was _that_?"

He sighs again. "Anemone, it was a kiss, okay? When you're done with a waltz, you kiss your partner's fingertips."

She looks at him. She wasn't that mad, really. It was just an instinctive reaction. "Oh."

"Exactly. I've got to go now. Make sure you eat something. I'll be back in an hour."

He leaves, his back to her. She watches him, then falls back onto the bed, her ear pressed against the pillow.

And then she hears it.

_One-two-three _slow_quickquick one-two-three_.

The beat echoes.

And hours later, it still hasn't left.

_ii_.

She's sitting in her room.

She's still in her dress. It's splayed around her, just like she is: limbs at gawky angles, hair spread out in a flyaway bun.

She wants someone to pick her up. She wants someone to grab her hands and pull her to her feet and _make her get up_.

But nobody's there (_no one's there, where are they, _he's not there_, where is he, where is he, come on, _where is he?). No one picks her up.

He's not there.

"Dominic, come and _get me out of here!_"

He's not there, and she wants him to be, but he's not, he's not, he's not there and she doesn't want to be here anymore so why hasn't he come, why hasn't he come because he's _not supposed to leave so where is he, why isn't he here?_

She wants to dance.

She's not sure why, since she just came from a ball where all you do is dance, but she wants to waltz.

So she stands up, holds her arms out, one on an imaginary shoulder, the other holding an imaginary hand. She steps, one-two-three, slow_quickquick_.

It doesn't feel right.

She needs someone to grab onto, someone real and substantial and _this doesn't work because no one is here_. She wants, no, _needs_ someone (_him_) to hold her waist and spin her round the room and dance with her.

Not for the first time, she wishes he was there (_but he's gone and she can't talk to him and where _is_ he?_).

She collapses onto her bed, pushing her face into the cushions.

Her heart beats in the same rhythm as before, that one-two-three slow_quickquick_.

She glares at the pillow.

Even now, she thinks of him.

She regrets trying to dance with empty air.

_iii._

When she wakes up, her head is hurting and her neck is raw.

She remembers flying. Not in theEND (_though she did that too, and she was crying until she felt like she was all dried up inside_)—she hadn't been in anything.

She had been flying through the air, with no machine, no wings.

It was almost falling, but not quite.

It was almost falling, but wasn't, because falling is when you're sad.

She hadn't been sad, because _he_ was there.

Not Dewey, with his not quite smiles and his cold, cold eyes and way of looking over you as if he couldn't see _you_, but just him. No, not Dewey, because Dewey hurt her head and Dewey had been why _he_ had left (_well maybe, maybe not, she's not sure but she knows his departure had something to do with the cold, cold man_).

It had been Dominic.

And because _he_ was there, she had been flying.

But in the here and now, she's awake and lying down and in a shirt instead over her battle uniform and her neck hurts and she sees _him_ and she gets up even though every muscle and bone in her body hurts _hurts hurts_ and grabs him and buries her head in his shoulder.

She could ask questions. She could yell and scream at him because _what was he thinking going after her, he could have __**died**_. She could tell him everything, tell him how much she had missed him and wanted him to stay.

She wants to ask him to dance with her.

But she doesn't.

Because standing here, as his arms wrap around her and hers around him, his chin on her head and her face buried in the fabric (_she takes deep breaths, because his uniform smells like him and that's a good smell_), as all her unasked questions and his unspoken answers stop in their throats, feels good.

Because standing here makes up for her empty waltz.

_(une danse pour deux)_

_FIN_

A/N: …I swear, I think my brain collapsed in on itself when I tried to finish this. Gack. (But it's Anemone and Dominic, so that makes it all better.) Oh, and because my French sucks, forgive me if the title isn't right. Sorry! (But I _think_ la valse vide means the empty waltz, plus une danse pour deux equals a dance for two. I think. Maybe.)

Review. …Pretty please?


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